In clinical daily life, it is often required in particular because of reasons of quality control to detect the number of sterilization cycles to which medical instruments, instrument sets or sterilization containers are subjected. Such recording on the part of the respective specialist staff is performed manually up to now, for example by using tally charts or tables. It is obvious that such a monitoring of the number of sterilization cycles of an instrument is full of uncertainties and unsuitable for verification. It is disadvantageous that it is not possible at present to detect the number of sterilization cycles to which a particular instrument is subjected in a reliable, verifiable and automated manner.